APEC Food Safety Cooperation Forum

On September 12th, 2014, the Asia Pacific Food Safety Cooperation Forum (FSCF) co-chaired by China and Australia convened food regulators, industry representatives, academia and other food stakeholders in the region to a “High Level Regulator Industry Dialogue on food safety” on the margin of the organization of the special meeting of the FSCF held on September 13th in Beijing.

Participants acknowledged the complementary nature of roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders in particular of industry and regulators in ensuring food safety and discussed avenues to enhance such collaboration.

Participants agreed to make 4 recommendations to the FSCF:

To enhance communication and collaboration between food safety regulators and industry under the auspices of the FSCF, recognizing the benefits of public-private partnerships,

To ensure that food safety regulators continue their commitment to transparency in policy development, in adopting good regulatory practices, the use of science-based international food safety standards and the opportunity for industry and stakeholder engagement in developing food regulatory measures,

To enhance ability of the food industry and food industry associations in the region to comply with food safety requirements, standards and best practices through dedicated capacity building activities with a possible focus on small and medium enterprises and

To enhance capabilities of APEC member economies and food industry using the established FSCF Partnership Training Institute Network (PTIN).

These recommendations were considered and supported by representatives of APEC member economies during the meeting of the FSCF held on September 13th, 2014. Enhancing collaboration between food stakeholders to support food safety will be one of the themes further discussed at the next meeting of the FSCF hosted by the Philippines in 2015.

During the upcoming meeting of the AOAC International (International Association of Official Analytical Communities), on September 9th, 2014, experts of the Food Allergen Community will be seeking and providing updates on their latest accomplishments and current challenges in the area of food allergen management, method development and validation as well as capacity building initiatives.

I will use this opportunity to provide the community (remotely) with an update on our recent capacity building activities under the auspices of the Asia/Pacific Food Safety Cooperation Forum to support improved practices of food allergen management by industry and regulators.

I am embedding in this post, the introductory remarks I had the opportunity to make during the Food Allergen Methodologies Workshop, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, in May 2014, co-organised by Health Canada’s Food Directorate and the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program (FARRP) of the University of Nebraska.

These remarks attempt to put in context these efforts of capacity building and the importance of our continued investment to promote knowledge transfer related to allergen management amongst food safety stakeholders.